Alesis has come out with their brand new percussion pad, the SamplePad Pro, out for 2014. It is the all-new successor to their relatively popular multi-pad percussion instrument, the Alesis SamplePad ($150). For those of us who love drum pads and need to have those juicy buttons to drum on, this is a big step up and one of our favorite new pieces of music gear for the year. It features some decent upgrades from the prior percussion pad. Let’s take a look.
This is an 8-pad velocity-sensitive . It has 6 larger pads (which was seen on the PerformancePad), but if you look at the picture, there are two more smaller-sized pads at the top. You take any sounds you want (said to be .wav format as always) and stick on an SD card. Simply insert the SD card into the front of the SamplePad and you’ve got your sounds loaded, so it’s super easy to use for any level a musician may be on. You can then further edit the sounds in the piece of equipment if you feel like it.
The back has ports for you to use a footswitch, hi-hat, kick, or additional drum pads you may want to combine with it for further expansion. What we especially like about it is the MIDI capabilities, having an IN and OUT port for external music device triggering.
Main features of the Alesis SamplePad Pro
- Play onboard sounds or load samples in an SD card
- Comes with 10 kits with over 200 drum sounds
- The sounds are accessible to external MIDI devices
- 8 two-shot rubber pads (6 larger and 2 small)
- Active blue LED lighting for the pads
- Additional pad inputs (two) and kick or hi-hat trigger ports
- A nice LCD screen and interior software for navigation and a little editing
- 1/4″ stereo and headphone output
- 1/8″ stereo aux
- MIDI IN and OUT
Our rating of the SamplePad Pro
Realm Rating:
Lowest price available:
Check back when product is released
Other versions available:
- The original SamplePad ($150 on Amazon)
- The PerformancePad Pro ($270 on Amazon)
